I never understood so well as in that period of contemplative exaltation that oriental jealousy which protects their women from the caress of the glance, which is as passionate, as enveloping, and almost as deflowering as the other caresses. To contemplate is to possess. How I felt that during those long sittings spent in putting on to canvas such a real and deceptive mirage as the smile and eyes of Camille, her smile of the past, and her eyes of to-day lit by ether flames! How I felt, too, that my talent was not in the depths of my soul, since the intoxication of this spiritual possession was not achieved by a definite creature! I have only sketched these days in which I lived and experienced the sensations produced by the achievement of a masterpiece. At least I respected in myself this attack of the sacred fever, and I never again touched, to complete it, the portrait I had drawn in that week. Why was not the period prolonged? Why? The fault is not alone in my own weakness. A simple incident occurred which did not depend upon my will. It sufficed to dismiss me from the drama of coquetry and real love which I wished to shun, to avoid being the confidant of former tragedies boasted of by Jacques—a confidant himself wounded and bleeding. Because of my troubles during the day following my introduction to the Bonnivets, and during my week’s solitary work, I had neglected to call upon them and leave my card. For that reason I felt I was not likely to see Queen Anne again. But that was the quarter from which reached me the pretext to break this period of solitude and work in the ordinary shape of a perfumed note emblazoned and scrawled in the most coquettish and impersonal English handwriting, by Madam de Bonnivet herself. It was an invitation to dine with her and a small party of mutual friends. The fact that this invitation reached me after my breach of etiquette proved clearly enough that her quarrel with Jacques had not lasted. The brief notice the dinner was for the following day, showed on the other hand that it was an unexpected invitation. A third fact added an enigmatic character to this note, which was as commonplace as the writing in it! Why had it not reached me through Jacques or with a few lines from him? My first idea was to refuse it. A dinner in town had appeared to me for years an insupportable and useless task. The too numerous family feasts I am constrained to attend, why?—the monthly love feasts of fellow artists which I am weak enough to frequent—why again?—two or three friends who dine with me from time to time—because I like them—the dining-room at the club where I go when I am very bored—these gatherings to a great extent suffice for the social sense which has withered in me with age. I shall end, I think, by only dining out about once in three years.